Deborah WonG

Deborah Wong is an ethnomusicologist and specializes in the music of Thailand and Asian America. She holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, where she worked with ethnomusicologist Judith Becker. Her B.A., magna cum laude, in anthropology and music, is from the University of Pennsylvania.

She has written three books: Louder and Faster: Pain, Joy, and the Body Politic in Asian American Taiko, Speak It Louder: Asian Americans Making Music, and Sounding the Center: History and Aesthetics in Thai Buddhist Ritual. She is a past President of the Society for Ethnomusicology.

She has taught at UC Riverside since fall 1996 and is a Professor of Music. Wong also taught as Assistant Professor of Music at Pomona College (1991-93) and at the University of Pennsylvania (1993-96); she has also been a visiting professor at Princeton University and the University of Chicago.

Wong is deeply involved with the Society for Ethnomusicology. She served as its President from 2007-09, on its Board of Directors for three consecutive terms as Secretary (1999-2001, 2001-03, 2003-05), and on the SEM Council (1992-94 and 2006-07)). She was president of the SEM Mid-Atlantic Chapter (1994-96) and served as co-editor of the SEM Newsletter with René T.A. Lysloff from 1994-99. She founded the SEM Committee on the Status of Women with Elizabeth Tolbert in 1996.

Asian American issues and activities are a priority for Wong. She has served on numerous committees addressing issues in the Asian American studies curriculum as well as Asian American student needs. She studied Japanese American drumming (taiko) from 1997-2009 and was a member of Satori Daiko, the performing group of the Taiko Center of Los Angeles.

She is a series editor for Wesleyan University Press’s Music/Culture series and serves on the editorial boards for the journals Ethnomusicology, Women and Music, Asian Music, and the Yearbook for Traditional Music. She is a curator for the new Asian Pacific America Series for Smithsonian Folkways. Very active in public sector work at the national, state, and local levels, she completed a term as the Chair of the Advisory Council for the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage in 2020.